Treesearch

In 1993, several forest industries, the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station, Louisiana Tech University, and the School of Renewable Natural Resources in the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center formed a cooperative that came to be called Cooperative Research in Sustainable Silviculture and Soil Productivity. One of the objectives of the cooperative is to determine whether typical, high-production harvesting is detrimental to the growth of newly established plantations. Prior to harvesting, dominant and codominant trees were severed and discs cut from the stems at 0.5-m...

Three site preparation treatments: (1) complete removal of woody debris—drum chopped, raked, and disked; (2) drum chopping leaving woody debris; and (3) no site preparation—planting among dead standing trees were compared by evaluating the growth and survival of planted loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) after six growing seasons following a southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis Zimmermann) epidemic. Each treatment was replicated three times at one location on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. Each treatment had the same number of planted seedlings (681) per acre, and was sprayed...

Early survival and growth rates are critical to the successful establishment of pine stands. Landowners need options to improve first-year growth on pine stands that will help them meet their land management objectives. One way to improve early stand survival and growth is through fertilization. In January 2008, approximately 5 acres of slash pine (Pinus elliottii Englem.) were planted on an old field site in south Alabama. Slash pine seedlings were treated with Accele-Grow-M™, a patent pending fertilizer supplement, to determine if there were any growth differences as a result of foliar...

Determining how anthropogenic disturbances affect site productivity through bioassays requires a complete understanding of both overstory and understory vegetation. This study was installed in 1997 to determine how soil compaction and intensive harvesting affected the inherent site productivity of pine stands on the western boundary of loblolly pine’s (Pinus taeda L.) natural range. We measured the plant communities at ages 5 and 10 on plots receiving a factorial combination of three levels of soil compaction and three levels of organic matter removal at harvest. Soil compaction had little...

Stand density management is a powerful silvicultural tool for manipulating stand volumes, but it has the potential to alter key wood properties. At a site in northcentral Louisiana, five density management regimes were conducted over a 45-year period. At age 49, a stratified sample of trees was destructively harvested for crown length, taper, and specific gravity determination. No differences among these tree and wood characteristics were found, suggesting that forest managers have great flexibility in density management options for such a site from a wood quality perspective.

We evaluated the changes in the bird community in relation to six disturbance treatments in the William B. Bankhead National Forest, AL. The study design is randomized complete block with a factorial arrangement of three thinning levels [no thin, 11 m²/ha residual basal area (BA), and 17 m²/ha residual BA] and two burn treatments (burn and no burn), with three replications. We collected data from pre- and post-treatment avian line-transect surveys. We found that the silvicultural treatments appear to create habitat for early successional bird species.

Uneven-aged management of southern yellow pine offers family forest owners in the Coastal Plain and Piedmont of the Southeast an attractive economic alternative to the two most common forestry scenarios. First, the great majority of owners practice no management. Too often they call in a timber buyer or procurement forester who high grades the forest. Second are the owners who follow the widely promoted industrial model of even-aged plantations. In either scenario, the owner can expect one major income event in a lifetime, followed, if he chooses, by a significant investment in site...

Epicormic branches are adventitious twigs that develop from dormant buds found along the main bole of hardwood trees. These buds may be released at any time during the life of the tree in response to various types of stimuli. Epicormic branches cause defects in the underlying wood and may cause significant reductions in both log grade and subsequent lumber value. Species, stress, and sunlight have been proposed as the three major factors affecting production of epicormic branches, but no definitive research has been conducted to evaluate this hypothesis. This paper reports preliminary...

Prescribed burning and thinning are intermediate stand treatments whose consequences when applied in mixed pine-hardwood stands are unknown. The William B. Bankhead National Forest in northcentral Alabama has undertaken these two options to move unmanaged, 20- to 50-year-old loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantations towards upland hardwood-dominated stands. Our study of their management employs a randomized complete block design with a three by three factorial treatment arrangement and four replications of each treatment. Treatments are three residual basal areas (50 square feet per acre,...

This report documents the results from the first “5-year” round of understory responses to the Tongass-Wide Young-Growth Studies (TWYGS) treatments, especially in relation to their effects on food resources for black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus sitkensis). Responses of understory vegetation to precommercial silviculture experiments after their first 4 to 8 years posttreatment were analyzed with the Forage Resource Evaluation System for Habitat (FRESH)-Deer model. The studies were conducted in western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla)-Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) young-growth forests in...